


Chin up, stapler man.

by MisterCloudyballs (orphan_account)



Category: Dyscourse, Dyscourse (Video Game), Job Simulator, Owlchemy labs, Vacation Simulator
Genre: Addiction, Airplane Crashes, Awkward Conversations, Comedy, Desert Island, Desert Island Fic, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Hunt, Hunting, Male-Female Friendship, Plane Crash, Smoking, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-03-29 12:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19020274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/MisterCloudyballs
Summary: After a while on the island, Rita had expected Steve to open up.But relationships require patience, work and more cigarettes.----------------It could have been two miles Or more. She couldn’t tell, and she was definitely not counting every step while squinting her eyes away from daylight’s brightness.“Weren’t you an accountant, Steve? Can you tell how much we’ve walked?”“I don’t think you know what an accountant is.”“Yeah, alright-““And I wasn’t an accountant either. I was a programmer. Though I wouldn’t blame you since no desk jockey deserves much credit either.”





	1. Dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> This was pretty much my response to the lack of interactions of the characters. The game itself is bland, but I figured it would help my writing to develop character chemistry. I would love feedback, and I appreciate you take your time to read this. Kudos.

What was Steve supposed to do on his free day, when there was a beautiful beach just steps from everyone’s rudimentary tents? Stare into the sunset and be thankful for a moment of renovation? Enjoy the saltiness of water while admiring the splendour of the sea?  
Or maybe sitting on a lump of sand while fidgeting with his lighter on one hand and a wet cigar on the other. Now that was his kind of activity. 

At least, he had companionship. One of them happened to be another frustrated graduate, whose degree has taken her career no further than a “crappy job”, in her own words. Even though being a barista didn’t sound as bad as being a code monkey for twenty years in the same company.  
Of course, Rita knew he had personal things to deal with. At some extent she was thankful for the fact that it didn’t take much digging to figure out what were those issues about. Nevertheless, she still wished he could lighten up a little. Just enough to walk up to him and say, ‘what’s up’? Without turning into a self-pity exchange.

Although maybe he wasn’t that unbearable. Everyone had flaws. And he was usually the one to point it out, when crucial topics were beaten around the bush. Rita wasn’t an exception. Sometimes she acted around the group of survivors as if she was walking on thin ice, humouring them needlessly and making it clear enough that she didn’t trust them entirely. If it was a particularly bad day, she’d outright treat them as caricatures.

He wasn’t buying that. And probably neither the rest of the group.

However, spending that much time together brought them the chance to look past appearances and obnoxious quirks. Those were… still pretty much there, but once one gets to know better the person who talks in their sleep or sneezes without covering their nose, it was almost possible look past annoying habits.

Almost.  
And that’s either a signal of a close relationship or compromised tolerance.  
Which was the survivor’s case? Depends greatly on who is being talked about.  
But things haven’t gotten out of control yet, and Rita was confident in her relationships. Outside that was none of her business. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------  


“That’s your last cigar, huh.” She inquired as she approached to the shore, leaving the campfire glowing in the night behind.  
Steve nodded quietly before turning back to the sight of the sea. At that point, water and sand seemed indistinguishable.  
“Must be harsh to go from smoking four a day to not have anything at all.”  
“I already was smoking less since we got here, when I realized perhaps there wouldn’t be a store at a desert island.”  
“I think that if there was a store here, we wouldn’t be buying cigarettes.”  
“Come on, now. We got a whole gourmet here. What’s for tonight, by the way? Boar meat again?”  
“Yup. Hunt went pretty well. Garrett is doing surprisingly good. Who would’ve thought his traps actually worked.”  
“Yeah, I’m glad he did something for once.”

Rita sat down and shifted her weight over the uncomfortable pile of sand. Meanwhile, Steve managed to light his last cigarette.

“Don’t tell me you’ll break your head again over tomorrow’s work.”  
“Again, Rita?”  
“I’m just…”  
He brought the cigar to his mouth, as she rolled her eyes at the familiar smell of tobacco.  
“Yeah, relax. I’ll stop thinking about it.”  
“Now, you can think about it. But what we don’t need is you pointlessly worrying over it.”  
“Sometimes I’m concerned about your apathy towards failure.”  
Rita tilted her head and frowned. “Mistake is not the same as failure.”  
“It’s different when you’re on a desert island.” Steve shook his head. “Any slip-up could, you know, get us killed.”  
“I’m sure cigarettes are more deadly than any slip-up.”

He finally stared at her for the first time in the night, clearly unamused.

“What do you suggest then, Rita? Sounds like you’re a professional.”  
“Well, by no means I’m dragging our past concerns into a competition." She let out a nervous chuckle. "But the thing is, we are sharing the same hardships right now, and I find it silly to believe you have the right to be more stressed than I am.”  


He didn't even seem to process it. Instead he rubbed his eyes and added, miffed:  
“Fine then. I’ll stop dragging us down.”  
“Steve, you’re just bottling it up.”  
“Am I? Wow, you’re really quite the expert in this matter.”  
Rita wanted to add something else, but quickly realized no matter how insightful it could be, Steve wasn’t going to cooperate.  
Before he could even realize, she left without a word.


	2. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is fairly simple. Rita is now unsettled, while Steve may or may not be wanting to change things up for the future. I hope I'll be able to write more dynamic scenarios in future works.

Steve didn’t ask to be left alone, unlike the last night.

Earlier in the morning, Rita and he were walking across a desert, under the blazing sun they were gotten used to. Steve had mentally prepared himself for the insufferable task of carrying gallons of water from an isolated oasis to their own little camp. The improved camp, for lack of a better term. Since moving on further into the island turned out to be a good idea, as insane as that sounded.

He wasn’t entirely convinced they could make it off, though. But the good thing about expecting the worst of every single situation was that he was either not even phased by tragedy, or pleasantly surprised at the positive turn of events.  
She had, however, constantly reassured him that it would all turn alright, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t gone through worse. All of that sounding like mindless blabbering under the heat of the desert.

Steve found her reckless optimism borderline fake. Listening to her say “It’ll be easy, we just have to move” unenthusiastically, while blotting sweat away from her forehead and using her jacket to cover her shoulders from a potential sunburn was pretty unconvincing.

He then told her it was alright to call out a shitty situation, it wasn’t her fault.  
But also, if she was afraid of turning like him after years of flipping life off, it was alright too. She shouldn’t definitely follow his example.  
Rita said nothing, she just let out an exhausted chuckle and kept moving forward.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It could have been two miles or more. She couldn’t tell, and she was definitely not counting every step while squinting her eyes away from daylight’s brightness.

“Weren’t you an accountant, Steve? Can you tell how much we’ve walked?”  
“I don’t think you know what an accountant is.”  
“Yeah, alright-“  
“And I wasn’t an accountant either. I was a programmer. Though I wouldn’t blame you since no desk jockey deserves much credit either.”  
“Hey, now. Look at the bright side. We’ll be doing this every week instead of typing behind a monitor. How fun is that?”

Steve was aware of what she had said, but at that point he could only think about his sore feet and dry throat, while nothing could filter the amount of stupidity coming out her mouth. 

A place to sit down and throw away her sweaty jacket would be nice, Rita thought. Too bad every semi flat surface felt like a frying pan under her thighs.  
Meanwhile Steve had excessively loosened up his tie, craving a cigarette at that moment. For all he cared, it could be 104 degrees and he’d still be smoking half a box. He’d say nothing about it though, and keep pretending his priorities were straight.

Two minutes passed.

Eventually they reached the familiar area, a fresher breeze and greener fauna greeted them. But it was until he had laid their eyes on the clear pond of fresh water that Steve stopped thinking about smoking, and drew near with empty bottles on hand.

“All of them, alright? It’s better to have few heavy trips than to constantly walk into a hellhole every three days.”

Rita crouched, plunging the bottle into the pond. As she did, she placed her jacket over a dry rock. She had finished filling all six bottles quickly out of exasperation. Steve was done brief moments after her. 

There was nothing else to do. That had been as exciting as their whole trip.

“Could we rest here for a bit? My foot is killing me.”  
“As long as it’s just a few minutes. We have to get moving soon.”

He laid on his back, now that the soil nearby water felt reassuringly cooler. Rita dusted off her boots, gradually becoming more aware of the annoying sensation of dirt on her hands, eventually leading to stare blankly at them. Maybe longer than she’d have expected. 

Her skin was feeling rough, her fingernails were short and there was an uncomfortable amount of mud under them. Something she’d barely manage to clean off without any soap or clean water. Things that none of the stranded survivors would be able to see or touch in a long time.  
A chilling sensation ran through her spine. As if that exact moment Rita realized how her fingers were fated to embrace nothing but endless sand, boiling rocks, dry plants, raw meat and pieces of wreckage from the plane.

That was scarier than any plane crash. In fact, she’d rather have died than having to live a new life where losing a limb or starving to death was an everyday possibility.  
At that point, Rita had begun to doubt her own optimism, quickly realizing that adapting to harsh conditions and merciless environments was slowly turning into a definite must, and not a temporal adjustment until they were rescued.

“This so shitty.”

Steve’s sudden voice made her almost skip a heartbeat. Rita quickly turned to him and placed her palms over the moist land, shaking her head.  
“It took you too long to say that.”  
“I just don’t know how to feel about not being able to take a shower ever again.”  
“Funny. I was thinking about that too.”  
“Really?”  
“Well, sort of. I think it’s not just the fact that we’ll be smelling like fish every day, obviously. It’s rather the absence of the shower, you know? Not being able to go back home, take a nice warm bath and lay on your mattress like this was all a bad dream. That’s kind of scary when you think about it, all the little things.”  
“Eh. I don’t really miss anything from home. Or my routine, for all that matter. In fact…” Steve straightened up from his position and looked back at her. “The only good thing about home was when I got my pay check to spend 90 percent of it on taxes, and the rest on brand new paperclips. A satisfying experience.”  
“So you’d rather live on a crappy island?”  
“Both are equally bad.”

Rita hesitated to smile back. “I’m afraid I can’t relate.”  
He shrugged, pulling down the discoloured sleeves from his shirt. Even though he expected no reassuring answer, Rita added:

“I wish I could, though. The least we could do as a group is make our stay less miserable.”  
“If you don’t have a pack of cigarettes hidden under your scarf, I don’t think there’s anything you could do for me.”  
“Alright then…”  
“What I mean is, why bother how everyone else is feeling as long as we’re still alive?”  
Rita sighed, noticing how their surroundings darkened as the sun had shifted from its position. She stood up from the ground and dusted off her back, while Steve watched her expectantly. 

“We should get going now.”

Later that night, he may have thought about home more than usual.


	3. How do you manage?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve finds out Garrett has something to hold onto as well, and it might not be that preposterous.

There was something about Garrett that bothered Steve from day one. Since the moment he ceased to suppress his consciousness due the trauma from the crash and realized that he was actually teaming up with people like _him_ , that's when his patience went downhill.

Garrett was exactly the kind of person he would have feared to be about ten years ago. Unemployed, oblivious and dependent. Back then when all Steve longed for was economic stability and a high position at his job. Looking back at his old ambitious self made him either smirk, or wanting to drown that abandoned idealism with compulsive tasks like re-organizing all his paperwork during an everlasting afternoon at work.

Garrett probably didn't know about any of that. He was watching him, sitting on a log right in front of the wooden small hut he shared with Teddy. If anything, that was what could be stressed about. The possibility of Teddy snapping at midnight and burying him alive to obfuscate signals from outer space or something like that.  
Besides from that, there was nothing that could take him off his console screen. Just like Steve did, Garrett realized his escapade from the real world wasn't going to last forever. He assumed batteries would run out pretty son, so he'd stop playing.

At least he _wanted_ to help. He wouldn't take a lazy, entitled slob as a survival companionship. And neither would George, the non official leader of the group. Speaking of which, Steve was low-key hoping to get considered as some kind of authority around when everyone clearly lost track of mind, which was a very common -and infuriating- thing to happen. However, George would somehow know that kind of power could easily get into the neglected man's head, so he'd naturally have Jolene as his right hand. _Whomever_ was truly the one in power was highly debatable.

That wasn't a kind of mental discourse he'd rather get into when cooking crabs and listening to an old woman claim about how he was doing it wrong; that he had to take the shell off first. As everyone wandered off (Rita dragging dry wood from the sand with George's help, Teddy hoping to catch a minnow from the shallow waters) Steve glared back at Garrett, who was sitting next to the cat.  
Not that he wasn't a cat person, but Steve was sure that they'll end up _eventually_ eating it.

"Boy, you don't seem very busy. Mind gettin' off that seat and rip apart this crab for me?" Jolene yammered, pressing her callous fingers against one of the sharp edges of the animal. "I'd rather save this strength for less degrading tasks."

Garrett nodded, giving the cat one last pat before walking over to the duo cooking under the sun. He awkwardly adjusted himself and grabbed a single crustacean, unsure about where to start. As for Steve, no amount of years of rusty paperclips could prepare his fingernails for this.

"I hope they're really dead." Garrett muttered, staring pitifully at the crab. "They actually feel everything when you cook them."  
"No sense." Jolene answered sharply as she shook her head. "Such hard headed bugs can't feel a thing. Besides, you're really gonna start complainin' about your meal cryin' in a situation like this? Eat 'em up, boy. You'll see--"  
She whimpered while mercilessly crushing her dinner in half, causing both men to stare away.  
"--How good it'll come out. You're lucky y'all have me around here. Otherwise, what'd you be eatin'? Rocks and shells, that's what! Georgie's always praisin' my cuisine, he's a man of taste too. I don't wanna hear 'bout it being too cold or too warm either, y'all eatin' punctually! As if this is auntie's reunion, you'll clam up and nod your heads, knowing better than to disrespect a woman in her own space."

Garrett and Steve shared looks momentously. Unsurprisingly, the next hour would be about toasting bruised crustaceans and Jolene going about her family's unorthodox methods for cooking. Until the sunset, the group would actually settle down and grab each a piece of unpleasantly crunchy crab.  
Even then, Jolene was the only one speaking anything other than 'what a hot day'. Garrett felt somewhat saddened by the fact that she was spilling the same words in different order, possibly in an attempt to keep the group's communication flowing.  
Steve, on other hand, knew damn well there was no way to shut her up. All he wanted was a quiet dinner. And despite what Garrett would say- "That's nice Jolene, I remember back home it was like that too."-, he also wished for some silence.  
A moment of silence for the dying battery, and the only thing keeping him in touch with his outdated video game analogies. Right there at that moment, with the heat of the fire smacking his face and a nibbled piece of crab between his fingers, the yellow circle eating on white dots would be replaced by a permanent black screen.


End file.
